Site assignment boundaries are NOT required in SCCM 2012

I’d like to do a quick post on something that I feel isn’t very well documented in SCCM 2012 – site assignment boundaries. Boundaries in SCCM 2012 are very different to previous versions not only because there are now ‘Boundaries’ and ‘Boundaries Group’ but because ‘site assignment’ and ‘content location’ are now separated and are configurable properties of a boundary group. For a one line definition of both of these, I quote directly from Microsoft (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh427326.aspx):

Site assignment = Site assignment is used by clients that use automatic site assignment to find an appropriate site to join, based on the clients current network location.

Content location = Content location is used by clients to identify available distribution points or state migration points, based upon the client’s current network location.

I’ll put a statement out there that I have proven a number of times and I have had clarified by the SCCM product group and also Microsoft Premier Support as a working and supported configuration – ‘Given the right scenario, site assignment boundaries are NOT required to be configured in SCCM 2012‘.

To give this statement some context, I have worked in numerous multi-vendor, multi-region and highly politically complex organisations where one or more vendors or internal teams may use SCCM (2007, 2012 or even SMS 2003) as their support tool and it will need to co-exist with other SCCM deployments / hierarchies within the same environment (including same Active Directory forest). A new SCCM 2012 hierarchy can be deployed into these environment without affecting the existing environments and without breaking the SCCM golden rule that ‘boundaries cannot overlap’ (well, this is still partially true with SCCM 2012 – site assignment boundaries cannot overlap however content boundaries can overlap).

So if you are putting in a new SCCM 2012 hierarchy and you don’t want to reconfigure boundaries on existing SCCM hierarchies, on your new implementation simply:

Untick the ‘use this boundary group for site assignment’ box for all of your boundaries groups, eg:

Ensure you have the appropriate site systems added into the content locations section

Ensure the SMSSITECODE=xxx installation property is entered into the tab in the Client Push Installation Properties, eg:

This way the client is hardcoded (for lack of a better word) to use a sitecode for site assignment (P00 in the above example) rather than trying to autodetect it, but the content location is still automatically and dynamically detected.

The impact of the above configuration on this new SCCM hierarchy is:

Automatic site assignment will not be supported. SCCM clients will always contact their designated Site Server unless reconfigured.

This hierarchy will not automatically support network roaming of SCCM clients.

Automatic client push installation will not work however other installation methods including pushing from the console with the ‘Install Configuration Manager Client Wizard’ will still work

A few relevant notes:

System Center 2012 Configuration Manager clients check the version of the Configuration Manager site before they complete site assignment and cannot assign to a Configuration Manager 2007 site if boundaries overlap. However, Configuration Manager 2007 clients do not check for the site version and can incorrectly be assigned to a System Center 2012 Configuration Manager site. (see client site assignment considerations in http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/jj822985.aspx)

You will still need to ensure the pre-existing SCCM hierarchies are configured so they don’t try and push the old SCCM client to your new hierarchy’s clients

This configuration assumes you use the client push wizard for client installation, obviously if you are doing manual or GPO client installation you will need to use the SMSSITECODE=xxx property too

If you manually assign a client computer to a System Center 2012 Configuration Manager site code that does not exist, the site assignment fails. The client remains installed but unmanaged until it is assigned to a valid System Center 2012 Configuration Manager site.

If you make a change to the site assignment configuration of a boundary group, only new site assignment actions are affected. Clients that have previously been assigned to a site, do not re-evaluate their site assignment based on changes to the configuration of a boundary group (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg712679.aspx).

After a System Center 2012 Configuration Manager client is installed, it must join a System Center 2012 Configuration Manager primary site before it can be managed. The site that a client joins is referred to as its assigned site. Clients cannot be assigned to a central administration site or to a secondary site.

The assignment process occurs after the client is successfully installed and determines which site manages the client computer. When you install the mobile device client during Configuration Manager enrollment, this process always automatically assigns the mobile device to a site. When you install the client on a computer, you can also assign the client to a site or you can just install the client without assigning it to a site. However, when the client is installed but not assigned, the client is unmanaged until site assignment is successful.

To assign a client computer, you can either directly assign the client to a site, or you can use automatic site assignment where the client automatically finds an appropriate site based on its current network location or a fallback site that has been configured for the hierarchy. After the client is assigned to a site, it remains assigned to that site, even if the client changes its IP address and roams to another site. Only an administrator can later manually assign the client to another site or remove the client assignment.

I use a maximum of one Google Ad per post to help offset some of my blog hosting costs.